The mother of a traitor

Maxim Gorky
"The mother of a traitor" by axim Gorky is a short story which deals with dual love: love
for the country and love for the son.
Monna Marinna's son has become enemical towards his own country. He doesn't have
any real grudge (Complaint) against the country. However, he wants' to destroy the whole city
and thus become popular amount the citizens. He wants that each citizen and each and every
object of the country should know his name and get afraid of him. He is now the head of the
troops who have surrounded the city from all sides and are ready to set fire into it. There is
restlessness everywhere in the city. No one is happy. All the people are crying bitterly out of
pain. The enemies are giving utmost tortures to the citizens. They have been deprived of all
kinds of facilities. The enemies have brown dead bodies into all the streams that supply water to
the city. The citizens have lost all kind of hope of life. Everything spoke to them of death, and
not a star was there in the sky to give them consolation. They were also afraid to light the lamps
on the houses at night.
Monna Marinna herself is not happy with what her son has become. She thinks of her
son and her country as a mother and citizen respectively. She had thought previously that her
son would become a great leader of the country and would do something for the nation. But, to
her great dismay, she has found her son as different and heartless citizen to all the people. He
has betrayed his own country and also his own mother.
Marinna ahs equal love for her son and for her native city. But, as a mother her heart is
weeping as her son has given suffering to all the citizens. Every citizen calls her "The mother of
the traitor" which gives unbearable pain to her heart. So, she decides to leave the city and goes
to her son. She finds her son crazed with the thirst for more glory. She tries to convince her son
by telling him that a hero is he who creates life by conquering death. But he answers very
arrogantly that the destroyer is as glorious as the builder of the city. He has become so blind for
the glory that he remains totally unaffected by her persuasion. Finally, Marinna makes her so
take rest in her lap and immediately covers him with her black cloak and then kills him by
pushing a knife into his heart. Thus by killing her son, she fulfills her duty as a citizen. But she is
also a mother and a mother cannot live her life comfortably by killing her own son. So, she also
kills herself with the same knife and fulfills the duty of the mother...
 Beauty
Susan Sontag
"Beauty" is an eassy written by Susan Sontag a very distinguished American critic,
novelist and screen writer of her time. Her eassy are marked by novel ideas. Here she defines
beauty, concept about beauty and then argues how the concept of beauty has dominated
woman.
For the Greeks, beauty was a virtue: a kind of excellence. They hoped that inner beauty
would be matched by beauty of the other kind. But the case of Socrates was quite paradoxical.
He was very intelligent, brave, honorable and seductive, no doubt. But he was very ugly to look
at. His disciples might not have paid any attention to the difference as much as we do now.
Nowadays we are very conscious of the enchantments of beauty. We look for the inside as well
as outside beauty. And we actually get surprised whenever we see both in one person. Mainly it
was the influence of Christianity that misinterpreted beauty. Really it had a very good and highly
prestigious place in the classical ideals of human excellence. But for almost two centuries it has
become a convention to attributes beauty to only one of the two sexes: woman. She is fair. But
she is second to man. "Handsome" is the masculine equivalent of feminine "beauty". A man can
be call "beautiful" in French and in Italian. It suggests that they still retain traces of the pagan
admiration of beauty to some extent.
A woman should look beautiful whereas a man should be strong, effective and
competent. In case of woman, the concept of beauty encourages narcissism, reinforce
dependence and immaturity. For desire of being beautiful and perfect, a woman is self
oppressed and anxious with the thought of evaluating every part of her body separately. In men,
good looks are a whole, no need of dissecting his appearance and of evaluating different parts
of this body. Beauty is a source of power that is k power of attraction. That's why women look
for beauty. A woman is always admired for her beauty. She may rise to a leading position in
politics, law, business, etc. However she is always under the pressure to confess that she still
works at being attractive. To be really free from the trap of " oppression and superficially"
woman should stand at critical distance from that excellence and privilege which is beauty.
 Customs
"Customs" is an essay written by Clyde kluckhohn an American anthropologist. He is
well known for these studies of the Navaho Indians and for his work on personality and culture.
Here he defines cultures and shows cultural differences by suing different examples.
Kluckhohn says that people are different not by instincts not by god, not by fate, not by weather
but by culture. According to anthropologist, culture is the man made part of the environment. It
is s the total life way of the people. It is the social legacy which the individual acquires forms his
group.
A man of culture is a man who is acquainted with history, literature, philosophy, so the
fine arts. In fact, we cannot explain acts only in theorems of the biological properties of the
people concerned their individual past experiences, and the immediate situation. Each specific
culture constitutes a kind of blue print for all of life's activities. One of the interesting things
about human beings is that they try to understand themselves and their own behavior. To the
insistent human query "Why"?
Anthropology offers the concept of culture. Others explain it with the concept of evolution
in biology, gravity in physics and disease in medicine. A good deal of human behavior can be
understood and indeed predicted, if we know a people's design for living. We brush our teeth on
a rising. We put on pants not a loincloth or a grass skirt. We eat three meals a day- not four or
five or two. We sleep in bed not in hammock or on sheep pelt. There is much other regularity
different from place to place.
To the American woman a system of plural wives seems instinctively hateful but for koryak
woman of Siberia the system of single wife is unfamiliar. A person may be American by birth,
but if he is brought up in china, his culture will be Chinese. A woman in Arizona swerves rattle
snakes to the guests in meal. But the guests after knowing about the food item, response with
violent vomiting. A biological process is caught in a cultural web. In Indian culture a boy does
not dance with a girl if both belong to the same family or have the same ancestry because
bodily contact in social dancing has a directly sexual connotation and that is an incest taboo.
At Yale University, the files of the cross cultural survey are organized according to categories
such as "marriage ceremonies", life crisis rites, incest taboos and all other seventy five
categories. They are of the opinion that all human beings are similar at bottom. They have about
the same biological equipment. All of them have similar life experiences such as birth,
helplessness, illness, old age and death. The biological potentialities of the species are the
blocks with which cultures are built.
 Knowledge and Wisdom
Most of the people have the concept that our age exceeds all previous age in knowledge
but there has been no correlative increase in wisdom. But the point is that they don't know what
wisdom is. In fact, there are several factors that contribute to wisdom. The first one is a sense of
proportion that is the capacity to take account of all the important factors in a problem and to
attach to each its proper importance. But at present this has become more difficult than it used
to be. Suppose for example, that one is engaged in research in scientific medicine. And he
doesn't have time to consider the effect which his discoveries or inventions may have outside
the field of medicine. Also, suppose he succeeds as modern medicine has succeeded, in greatly
lowering the infant death rate, not only in Europe and America but also in Asia and Africa. But
this has resulted in making the food supplies inadequate and lowering the standard of life in the
most populous part of the world. Another impressive example is: suppose one study the
composition of the atom from a disinterested desire for knowledge and suddenly places in the
hands of powerful lunatics the means of destroying the human races. In such ways the pursuit
of knowledge may become harmful unless it is combined with wisdom. And wisdom is not
necessarily present in specialists in the pursuit of knowledge.
The essence of wisdom is emancipation. We cannot help the egoism of our senses.
Sight, sound, touch and emotion are bound up with our own bodies and cannot be made
impersonal. An infant feels hunger or discomfort and is unaffected except by his own physical
condition. But gradually, as his thoughts and feelings become less personal, he achieves
growing wisdom. No one can view world with complete impartiality. But it is possible to make a
continual approach towards impartiality, which constitutes growth in wisdom. Bertrand Russel
says that wisdom can be taught. It includes a large intellectual element, i.e. moral instruction.
He is of the opinion that knowledge and morals should not be too much separated. Even the
best technicians should be good citizens. With every increase of knowledge and skill, wisdom
becomes more necessary. The world needs wisdom as it has never needed it before, and if
knowledge continues to increase the world will need wisdom in the future even more than it
does now.
 The use and misuse of science
The history of civilization shows how to choose between making the right and wrong use
of the discoveries of science. In a very short period amazing discoveries have been made and
applied to practical purposes. So, people say that they are living in an age of revolution.
IN fact, Science is a great boon to mankind. It has brought multitudes of benefits and
advantages to people. It has helped to fight malnutrition hunger and disease. It has lengthened
life and has also increased its quality. Fields of knowledge, experience and recreation are now
available to millions of people. Now we must accept the fact that science has done and is doing
a lot for the welfare of our race.
But the gifts of modern science can be misused. The motor driven vehicle makes
business easy and gives harmless enjoyment to many. But it can also kill many people.
Similarly, the cinema is a means of instructions and recreations but it is also a channel of
vulgarity and false values. The wireless can link the world together in the moment of time, but it
can also be the instrument of spreading propaganda. Likewise, the airplane makes travel rapid
and easy but it can also be used as weapon of destruction.
Now the question arises as to how far it is morally instifiable to make and perfect
discoveries and inventions which can be used for purpose of destruction. This was the question
raised by professor hill. He discusses two problems in relations to this question. The first was
taken from the development of nuclear physics. It has greatest value to mankind if used rightly.
But at present the main object of the development of this science is to produce weapons such
as the atomic and hydrogen bomb of the great destructive power. Is it right? Therefore to
continue research on it? The other problem arises from the success of science in overcoming
disease and lengthening life. Science has increasing life. Science has increased birth rate and
life expectancy by controlling hunger and disease but the supplies of world food are not
increasing at the same rate. In this case the world becomes divided into two groups: "haves"
and Have knots" people will start fighting against starvation and in this fight the land will be
exhausted and there won't be fertile plains any longer due to erosion. So, is it right to continue
improving world health and reducing mortality if it is evidently clear that by doing so future
famine and disorder are sure? These types of question are really a great challenge to thoughtful
men.